


Spin The Sky (light the path, and these strange steps take us back)

by Whatthef0ucault



Category: Manic (2001)
Genre: Anger, Catharsis, Dark fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, First Love, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Violence, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Mutual Pining, No present rape/non-con, Not The Kind Of Restraints You Think, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Canon, Protectiveness, Restraints, Teens, Underage Kissing, van gogh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27052534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whatthef0ucault/pseuds/Whatthef0ucault
Summary: Looking at each other, holding the weight of their acknowledgement of what it means to be together in this fucked up space, Lyle finally says, "Hi.""Hi." Tracey's word is just as quiet, barely taking up room. Before she can finish wiping off the tears that are still trying to leak out of her eyes, warm skin connects with her own.Craning his neck as far forward as he could, Lyle nudges his forehead into hers. He closes his eyes, enjoying the simple touch, one he hadn't been sure he would ever get to have again."You okay?" He asks with a rare sincerity, the same he had used when he had offered to kill the scum who had raped her."No." The tiniest upturn of her full lips somehow meets her eyes through her bitter honesty, pulling the softest hint of one from him, before she clarifies, "But yeah, right now."He nods the smallest nod against her, swallowing thickly.The low hum of the shitty ac system and the cracking of cheap linoleum tiles probably underfoot of a useless MHA down some far off hallway outside the door are the only sounds that mix with their slow breaths."...You left."
Relationships: Lyle Jensen/Tracey
Comments: 2





	Spin The Sky (light the path, and these strange steps take us back)

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, this movie is one of my favorites and there wasn't any kind of fic written about it yet, so I wanted to write a little something. This is set the night/early morning after the end of the film. If you [haven't seen it yet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnmolKb-pcw), I highly recommend it. 
> 
> MHA = Mental Health Associate in this story, or direct care workers. 
> 
> Also, the title is taken from two different Yeah Yeah Yeah's songs, [Skeletons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-15Z_26hDY) & [Hysteric](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ_UKs-YhI8). They both inspired the vibe of this story heavily, and I felt it matched the imagery from the movie, too. 
> 
> Enjoy!

He watches over her while she sleeps, two lost people laying across a shitty twin bed with thin, white sheets and an even thinner mattress. It makes due as a makeshift home, a temporary fix for deeper problems. The hint of that nauseating plastic smell drifting up from under their —his— pillow with every little sway of his aching, dizzy head irritates him. Rolling his head forward, his face finds comfort in her dark, sweet, slightly greasy hair.

The angle of his wrists strapped down and arms pinned to his sides doesn't leave the right amount of space for her body to fit into the crook of his side, and he _hates_ it. There's no way she can be comfortable like this, his trapped, dead arm be damned. But at least she was here, at least she was close. 

At least she came. 

All the while, the way she breathes so evenly across his chest and neck paints the tranquil picture of comfort. The feeling of her shape molded into his skinny frame makes him feel alive, makes him forget the way his head sways without movement as he comes to and comes back down from it all simultaneously.

If he had a clue about what love was, or could be, he thinks he could love her, easily. 

He waits patiently for the quake. 

He pulls experimentally on his legs and free hand, the reverberations from the kick back in their confines instantly catches sparks in his skin, burns deep in his chest. His hand rolls into a shaky, white-knuckled fist while his eyes close, caged again, now even worse. His head starts to throb, probably from whatever forced cocktail he’d been given when the formerly violent, out of control teen who had finally managed to find his escape from this hell he'd been trapped in for weeks had somehow walked back through those liberated doors, voluntarily. Calmly. Keys in hand.

How else was he supposed to react when staff members had swarmed him with twenty questions and at least three big MHAs like he was some kind of wild animal? ‘Fight’ is all he has ever known, and he had entirely failed at his first attempt at ‘flight’.

All of the loud thoughts shouting self righteous bullshit spiral through his head, mixing in with the sound of blood rushing in his ears and the taste of copper he was just now noticing on the inside of his lip. Yet, his breathing continues to match hers, steady and slow, stuttering here and there as to not surpass their matched pace. As the crawling slows and the burning cools, the rage fading over the course of several minutes, he smirks to himself in the most pleased, sarcastic way as he finally realizes what the big deal about 'deep breathing' must have been all along. 

He watches over her while she sleeps.

The rolls of muscles across her body start to tighten, tremors giving way to that terror. Little, scared sounds escape full, soft lips he had kissed so gently the night before. 

"Tracey, Trace-" he whispers, knowing what comes next. He has heard it for weeks on end from down the hall, gut wrenching, only very recently earning his place here, next to her. 

Tracey's hand grips and releases his shirt. Her body moves through veiling moments of relaxed unconsciousness and then draws it back to expose her terrified dream state all over her face, in her strangled voice, in her tightened limbs. The way she cries off and on in her sleep, tries to curl up so small against him, further into him, only serves to make him that much more determined to save her from it. 

"Tracey, wake up, it's okay," he says softly, pulling at his restraints that clink and tighten. Yanking stubbornly, he growls as quietly as possible as another wave of rage flows and burns from his core into his fingers and toes. He wants to _kill_ whoever had done this to her, but he has to settle for killing His mirror image that kept replaying nightly in her dreams. God, all he wants is to touch her face, ever so gently, just to wake her, just to help. He knows how to, by now. 

The whimpered "please," that left Tracey's lips was shaky and quiet, pleading for a mercy that he so desperately wanted to grant her. 

Nudging his head and his body into hers, he kept quietly saying her name like a prayer. 

"Shh, Tracey, wake up. I know you can, Tracey. They're going to hear you." 

"Please...no…god please stop!" Tracey gets out in another strangled cry against him, her head moving side to side against his chest as she curled up all the way.

"Come on, Tracey, _Tracey_ ," he urges, twisting against her as much as he could in his confines. Anything to bring her back.

All at once, she stops, save for the way her chest heaves in heavy, stuttered inhales.

His chest swells, from anticipation or pride, he wasn't sure, waiting with baited breath.

It's his name that leaves Tracey's lips, fleeting, broken, and small.

"Lyle...Lyle?"

Unkempt, dark hair turns, sweeping over his chin and shirt, and gives way to blue, wet eyes shaped like moons. 

Lyle lets out the breath he has been holding in. Yeah, that's definitely pride.

Looking at each other, holding the weight of their acknowledgement of what it means to be together in this fucked up space, Lyle finally says, "Hi."

"Hi." Tracey's word is just as quiet, barely taking up room. Before she can finish wiping off the tears that are still trying to leak out of her eyes, warm skin connects with her own.

Craning his neck as far forward as he could, Lyle nudges his forehead into hers. He closes his eyes, enjoying the simple touch, one he hadn't been sure he would ever get to have again. 

"You okay?" He asks with a rare sincerity, the same he had used when he had offered to kill the scum who had raped her.

"No." The tiniest upturn of her full lips somehow meets her eyes through her bitter honesty, pulling the softest hint of one from him, before she clarifies, "But yeah, right now." 

He nods the smallest nod against her, swallowing thickly. 

The low hum of the shitty ac system and the cracking of cheap linoleum tiles probably underfoot of a useless MHA down some far off hallway outside the door are the only sounds that mix with their slow breaths. 

"...You left."

Tracey finally speaks one of the proverbial elephants in the room into existence. She pulls back enough to look at him and wears her furrowed brow, doll eyes, and little dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks well.

"I did," Lyle admits out loud for the first time.

Tracey doesn't answer him yet, just keeps looking at Lyle in that same way that makes him want to coax words out of her, makes him almost _want_ to talk. 

"I came back."

"Sure," she says, eyes drifting down. 

Lyle pulls his head back, seeing the way she starts to bite at the skin of her bottom lip in that unsure way she does, especially during group. His stomach clenches with it, clamps down on the burning pit there that hasn’t stopped wondering, ‘what if’ing, ever since she had stared at him and his offer of freedom in the face, ever since she had let him go. 

He can’t take it anymore. The words spill over into reality. 

"...Why didn't you come with me?" 

Tracey looks up at him, that shyness leaving her face as her eyebrows pull forward, then relax back and lift up.

“I looked _everywhere_ for y—” Lyle stops himself in the same moment that he hears and feels how tight his words are, feels something wet and hot on his face. 

"I don’t know…” Tracey starts, blinking for a moment with a little shake of her head before her hand reaches out to brush over Lyle’s cheeks, one after the other. A deep ache on one side tells Lyle about the bruising Tracey can already see. “You’re not ready, you know? You’re not finished here."

Lyle huffs a single, quiet laugh. Great, he’s fucking crying. He hasn’t cried since he was six, when everything had started to go to shit, when he had stopped being able to. 

Reaching out for her, his hand catches not three inches out, and he remembers. He lets it hang there suspended in the tension, his head falling back into the stupid plastic lined pillow along with any other excuses he could think of or attempt to justify. He didn't even need to acknowledge the hysterical irony of circumstance to know that Tracey was absolutely right. He didn't need to be hysterical to know that he hated it all the same. He didn't need to admit outloud what they both had apparently known all along, what Lyle had already come to realize for himself in the backdrop of a life changing bus stop. 

"Neither are you,” Lyle mumbles to Tracey, his eyes looking away as he tries to push all of it down and away. “I shouldn’t have asked.” 

He doesn’t expect to feel soft, slightly chapped skin press into his aching cheek, triggering a silent gasp in response. Lyle’s head slowly turns into the paused kisses, that burning pool in his stomach melting down with it. He isn’t used to Tracey taking the initiative like this, but it's the most reassuring thing he's ever felt. Their lips press together slow, raw, careful like before. Lyle kissed her like she was the one good thing he had in the darkness, like she could give him the start of a fucking clue on how to be a person, helping to light a shared path through Van Gogh painted fields. 

She kisses him back the same way. 

Time passes slowly, or quickly, losing all meaning to both of them save for the way they hold it together. It isn't until breathing becomes an issue that they break apart.

Lyle’s dark eyes squint with his light, adoring amusement while he huffs out “How the fuck did you get in here?”

Tracey just gives him the softest, kiss-flushed smile and a little shrug of her slumped, sweater covered shoulders.

“Come on, you—" Lyle’s words die on his tongue as his eyes catch the moonlight coming in through the window glint off of the keys suddenly dangling from Tracey’s finger. 

“...I think I love you.” 

Tracey laughs against him, full and deep, ugly and free. 

“I think I love you, too.”

Lyle's normally guarded, hard, brown eyes soften, the line of his mouth finally cracks into a genuine, dimpled smile. He feels a new, hopeful sensation take up roots alongside two already sprouting seedlings marked 'love' and 'change'.

"One day, we're gonna get out of here," Lyle declares, soft and steady, drawing Tracey's attention back to him. "And no bastard is _ever_ gonna hurt you again, I promise. We're...we're gonna be okay."

Lyle isn't sure if Tracey is smiling at him like he hung the moon, or like he is an absolute fool, or both, but for once, he is perfectly fine either way.

"...We're gonna be able to handle it," Tracey says, a soft correction for an otherwise whole hearted agreement in how she kisses him fearlessly. 

Kissing her back, Lyle comes to understand that, ultimately, this is really all he has wanted all along. 

"...We're gonna be able to handle it."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Respectful comments are always wanted and welcomed here!


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